IN NOVEMBER 2024, I became both a newly qualified counsellor and a newly elected councillor. I received many cards congratulating me on the latter, using the spelling of the former. According to my e-dictionary, these words are very often confused — and confusing. One of the cards suggested that I might be the only current stipendiary cleric in the C of E to hold both designations.
In 27 years (so far) as the Vicar in my parish, I have become embedded within the wider fabric of the community, through myriad occasional offices (I recently led the wedding of the daughter of a couple I married when I arrived here), civic services, school assemblies, and a multiplicity of other community events. But it was the pandemic that was inadvertently responsible for a deeper connectedness, as I found myself co-ordinating 50 volunteers offering practical care to the most vulnerable in our villages; and through the establishment of a community foodbank, which still supports 30 individuals, many of whom are children.
Through such community engagement, I became increasingly aware of other local needs and issues, some of which necessitated advocacy before parish councillors, on behalf of those who felt themselves to have no voice.
WHEN I was asked to consider standing for one of several vacancies on the parish council, my mind initially turned to the number of “plates” I was already spinning in my life. Then I turned to Jesus’s parables of salt, light (Matthew 5.13-16), and yeast (Matthew 13.33), and the sometimes disproportionate impact and influence that one individual can make through the challenge of putting Jesus’s teachings into practice (Matthew 7.24-25).
Although conscious of the demands on my time and the narrow margins around my life, I began to think I could make a difference, and that this might help further to soften the walls of our churches in a way that furthered mission.
Standing as an independent candidate, I was deeply encouraged to be elected with the largest majority. It has been illuminating to experience the high-quality training offered, the amount of timethat the volunteer parish councillors give to their portfolios, the depth of non-partisan collegiality on the council, the practical difference that can be made, and, sadly, the amount of criticism (sometimes deeply personal) that some councillors face, especially (though not only) on social media.
MY FIRST real exposure to counselling was through grief-counselling sessions that I reluctantly sought in 2010 after suffering a familial loss, and after taking a plethora of difficult funerals. It became clear that I had inadvertently repressed my emotional sadness (only too common in a society not good at helping us to reflect on and prepare for death), and this had led to a grief which was intensified, delayed, prolonged, complicated, and denied.
The counsellor was adept at listening, empathetic, and proffered wise insights. Retrospectively, those 12 sessions (financed by my diocese) were deeply healing for me, and helped to enrich and transform my continuing response to a vocation to priestly ministry. Since then, a steady stream of people, from the church family and wider community, who were struggling with various mental-health issues have come to me for pastoral care, and needing onward signposting to talking-therapy services (both private and NHS) that have proved deeply beneficial.
THIS “stream” became something of a torrent after the pandemic. It was at about this time that I began to consider the possibility of training as a counsellor, as a way of giving back into an area that had been so beneficial to me. In the summer of 2024, I completed the three-year, part-time M.Sc. in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy from the University of Derby, and became a registered member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP). I currently see private clients online, and others, face to face, at the counselling centre where I was a trainee and am now an affiliate.
I collaborate with clients presenting with a broad range of issues, some of whom have faith. Because of my background and experience, I prioritise making time to offer help to both serving and retired military personnel and church leaders. The latter face special pressures nowadays, not least from bishops who follow a centrist diocesan policy over the allocation of personnel and resources, while stipendiary parish-clergy numbers fall and multi-parish benefices become larger.
COUNSELLING or psychotherapy can minister to the parts of us that are overlooked and unacknowledged. If psychological pain can be brought into our conscious, it becomes accessible for transformation. Healing can then sometimes occur at our deeper levels of woundedness — not just its superficial appearances or manifestations.
That sometimes protracted and often painful process reminds me of how God meets us in the deepest places of our broken humanity with gifts of healing. As counsellor and councillor, I have found ways of taking the values of my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ out beyond the church walls, into the surrounding culture(s) and community. They also involve partnership with others, with a diaconal edge of leading to serve. I have been personally enriched by my involvement in these areas.
I create time for counselling clients on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and the parish council meets in session one evening a month (with some additional committee meetings). On those days, I ensure that I take the afternoons off, and my PCC is supporting me with administrative support.
The pandemic was one of those experiences for which one could never really be prepared. Reflecting on it, however, I recognise that, alongside the sadness that it brought, it has been responsible for turning my world upside down and inside out, in a life-affirming and enriching way. This, I hope and pray, continues to bring blessings and healing to others, too.
The Revd Tim Sumpter is Vicar of Ockbrook and Borrowash in the diocese of Derby, and a retired Chaplain to the Army Reserve.
